


The Brief Candle

by signalbeam



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Eye Horror, F/F, Sex Disasters, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GA: I Should Have Clarified<br/>GA: When I Asked To Kill You I Meant It Romantically</p><p>In which Rose Lalonde loses an eye and then gets it back. Romantically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Datum

**Author's Note:**

> Or: why you should never take sex advice from romance novels.

TT: “Gatoin’s arm flexors spasmed as he wrapped his hand around the vibrating length of Hotsun’s member. The indigo-blood gasped in shock as Gatoin’s fingers worked his throbbing masculine spear. He hated that lowly rust blooded fool for knowing him so well, how to incapacitate him with a mere touch and stroke. He hated how the young, vacillating twit could undo him so completely. Gatoin smiled at Hotsun, and then, slowly, opened his mouth wider to accept Hotsun’s magnificent yellow horn.”   
GA: Taking Liberties With The Translation Again I See  
TT: “Throbbing masculine spear” is going a little overboard, I agree, but the rest is depressingly literal.  
GA: If You Balk At This Display Of Egregious Euphemisms For Horns And Genitalia Then I Thought You Should Know That The Author Was Assassinated Half A Perigee After Finishing The Hexalogy For Describing The Bulge Of A Violet Blood As A Softening Case Of Cheese   
TT: I would have been all right with most of these if it were more clear whether or not people are impaling themselves with horns or bulges.   
GA: Sometimes People Do Both   
TT: … Really?   
GA: Not At The Same Time  
TT: Clearly.  
GA: But If The Horns Are Blunt Enough And Sometimes Even If Theyre Sharp They Uh Get Off On That So To Speak   
TT: Interesting.   
GA: Interesting  
GA: What Do You Mean By   
GA: Oh  
GA: No  
GA: No Rose We Are Not Trying It  
GA: You Would Be Venturing Straight Into The Chasm Of Idiocy   
GA: The Sheer Suicidal Stupidity Of Our Objective Would Be Enough To Brand Your Death As Heroic  
GA: Heroic Because That Is What Heroes Do Find Impossible Objectives And Attempt To Accomplish Them And Then Get Killed For Trying  
GA: Rose  
GA: I Can Feel Your Mind Whirring Away Like A Small Petroleum Fueled Metal Chariot Straight Down Idiot Lane   
TT: You’ll come around to it eventually.   
GA: No There Will Be No Coming Around To Anything  
GA: How Have You Already Forgotten About That Time Your Nook Fractured My Wrist

 

1\. 

 

Just as Rose predicted, Kanaya had folded within hours. Curiosity, Kanaya said. The reason why she had surrendered hardly mattered to Rose, just the surrender. After all, what was the point in reading Karkat’s ridiculous novels if not to become acquainted with the most Harlequin facets of trollish sexuality and use them as an instruction manual? 

When they tried it last night, Rose had kneed Kanaya in the chest and her foot fell into Kanaya’s hole, and then they both tumbled off of the chaise longue and it was all very sad. This time Rose approached Kanaya while she was reclined on the arm of the chaise longue with the evening’s food grub in her lap. She moved her chair so her knees and Kanaya’s head were separated by the chaise’s raised arm, and placed her hands in Kanaya’s hair. Kanaya twisted the leg off of the grub, then licked the blood off its stump. It squeaked, unpleasantly. 

“Well,” Kanaya said. “I suppose we are to conduct this little experiment after all.” 

“My mother _was_ a scientist,” Rose said. “And the cornerstone of science is replicability.” And at least one successful attempt where she didn’t knock out anyone’s spine with her foot, but she was trying to forget that part of last night. 

“And you are going to cut out your tongue,” Kanaya murmured, but she was already relaxing into Rose’s fingers. She plucked off another leg, and then sealed the grub back in its jar. 

Rose had asked Kanaya, once, about the difference between a food grub and a wiggler, but the only thing she had gotten out of the subsequent explanation and kissing had been  There Are Lucky Ones And Then There Are The Delicious Tastily Doomed. But Kanaya had a habit of either exaggerating or understating Alternian customs and culture to Rose, speaking sometimes in such an arch tone that it sometimes wrapped back around into sincerity. Rose’s image of Alternia was one part grim exposé and one part South Park. Best not to think too much about it. 

“Lighten up,” Rose said. “We both know that’ll be the only way you’re going to best me in our lopsided battle of wits. Sometimes I worry that you conceive this relationship as Soviet Russia versus the United States, when it’s really more like Luxembourg versus Vatican City.” 

“And there you go, referencing your pointlessly fractured world,” Kanaya said. “Sometimes I think about how much you must have used your sarcasm abilities as a child in order to navigate a planet where even agreeing on a lingua franca proved too heavy a burden for the fragile collective human think pan.” 

“Precisely. It’s a miracle we can even speak at all,” Rose said, and wrapped her hand around a horn. The novel said the best way to turn horns into an erogenous zone was to massage the scalp while applying oral and tactile ministrations to the length of the horn; biologically speaking, it sounded like a load of horseshit, but Kanaya’s eyes didn’t close until Rose worked her other hand into her scalp. The horns themselves were a bit shorter than Rose’s hand, and roughly as thick as two fingers and solid all the way through. She was conscious, suddenly, of the damage she could do. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to snap them; but she could do pain. 

This was true of just about every body part, though. When Kanaya looked suitably relaxed, Rose dug her nails into the tip of the horn. “Ow,” she said. 

“Sorry. Did that hurt?” 

“Yes,” Kanaya said, and glared. 

“What about this?” 

“Wh—Rose, what are you doing, I demand to know.” 

“Sensitivity check,” Rose said, rubbing over the spot she had clawed with her thumb. “A point of datum in our grander venture of creating a guide to successful interspecies sex. Or so you told me when you were playing with my breasts.” 

“Nipples are,” Kanaya began, and Rose gave her another pull. “—Ow! The one on the right. Now please cease your experimenting.” 

It was the straight one. Rose settled her free hand into the space between the two horns, her other firm against the side of Kanaya’s head. She kissed the peak of the horn, and wrapped her right thumb around the base. She saw, through the skirt, Kanaya’s knees rise, then relax. Heard the gasp, then the sigh. This time, when she kissed the horn, just above her own hand, Kanaya tilted her head into the kiss and further into her grip. 

“And to think,” Rose mused. “Just a minute ago, you would have begged me to let you go back to playing with your food.” 

“I am,” Kanaya said, and then, “ _Aaah._ … Which—I meant that…”

“Please, go on,” Rose said, and kissed the horn again, letting her lips drag over the ridges. Kanaya’s jaw clapped shut, then opened for a moan that made Rose’s chest tighten, almost painfully. She could feel, beneath her tongue, things her fingertips hadn’t: variations in thickness, places where the structure had cracked or warped. A long vein of warmth she found with her tongue that made Kanaya grab onto the red velvet with her glowing fingers. She used her left hand to keep a tight hold around that stripe. Her right hand slipped to cradle the base of Kanaya’s skull, stroking her neck and angling her head in turn. She was so _pliable_ ; Rose ached now, more than ever, to be on top of Kanaya, to watch as the light slowly tinted green, to be able to feel the jerks of those legs through the skirt—she imagined working her hand into Kanaya’s nook, the wet, slick folds and the alien push of the bulge, the inevitable green stains on her hand and the couch and, even worse or better, on her leggings. Later, she promised herself, and dragged her tongue along the outer edge of the horn. There’d be time for that later. 

Below her, Kanaya was breathing, presumably to say something. Rose waited—hoped—for the words, but nothing came out. Apparently this was just for the pleasures of stretching her muscles. Rose pressed the front of her tongue along that warm stripe and dragged down until Kanaya’s stray hairs pressed against her nose, and yes, there was a gasp, full of air and strained with pleasure. She did it again, and again, all the while sliding her right hand down the familiar geometry of Kanaya’s face: the tapering bristle of an eyebrow, the shut eyelid, the expanse of hard, prominent bone around her eyes, the jut of the cheekbone just beneath too-smooth, too-firm skin. Down and slow over fanged teeth, over soft, black lips to feel that _“oh”_ form in her own fingers, maybe once or twice. Then down to the give and swell of chin, and then reaching the soft, unprotected skin below her jaw. She lingered there only for a moment, before reaching for the collar of Kanaya’s shirt, and slipping her hand beneath it. She could feel something, almost like a pulse, thrumming not only against her tongue from the horn, but in the sharp jut of bone where a sternum ought to be. Never mind that Kanaya’s heart worked more in theory than in practice, or that horns didn’t have veins or arteries, and that this was most likely imagined. She felt, for a moment, a need to kiss Kanaya, to breathe into her. Undead resuscitation, she thought, and kissed the top of her head. 

Kanaya’s head bumped against her chin. She was undoing the buttons of her skirt. She pushed it past her hips, enough so Rose could see the bony rise of her hip and a slash of dove gray underwear, darkened down the front with green.

“Ah,” Rose said against the bony, rougher edge of the horn. “The Kraken has awakened.” 

“I have no idea what that means,” Kanaya said, with an inflection of warmth and practiced mockery that, combined, formed the familiar flavor of her pity. “But it sounds tremendously stupid for reasons I’m certain your lumpy think pan can reason out.” 

Kanaya inhaled, and Rose felt the protective, plate-like structure beneath the skin expand. Her bulge wrapped around her wrist, and her knees were wide open and straining her skirt. Probably fingering herself, Rose thought, and reached, further down Kanaya’s torso, until she reached the pits where Kanaya’s extra legs once attached. It’d be something to make Kanaya come from this alone, to tie Kanaya’s hands behind her back and keep her hands confined to the head and fuck her just like that until she arched off the chaise and _came_ , first spilling eggs into the pail, then the hot desperate release. Another time. She moved onto the bent horn now, tonguing the base while applying tight, hot pressure to the two points and digging her nails into the legless depressions on Kanaya’s side, and yes, there was green on everything, the light, on Kanaya’s hand, and even through the fabric of her skirt. 

She took a moment to admire the view, the way the sweat gave Kanaya’s body a dew-like sheen, the slight shake in her irises beneath the black lashes. Kanaya was close to coming—pailing, trolls called it—and Rose could feel it, too, the heavy beat of arousal in her ears. She worked her way to the outer edge, and for a moment wanted to take the whole horn into her mouth, move deliriously deep until the whole thing was rammed into her mouth—a stupid risk she’d never take, but she wanted to do it, to see if she could—

And then she saw the flash of transportalizer activating. Rose was aware, at first, of the jerk of Kanaya’s head, then of the hooked part of the horn catching on the fold of her eyelid, but a deeper Sight flashed through her brain, and she knew that Kanaya’s horn was going to rip through the lid and into the eye and, in her panic to withdraw, cut through the socket floor, and she knew that the only things more inevitable than this happening were entropy, gravity, and Karkat Vantas fainting. 

Oh, fuck, she thought, just before the terror set in. She wasn’t even going to get an orgasm out of this. 

 

*

 

“ _Pailing_ ,” Karkat said, hoarsely. “You two were pailing on your concupiscent couch and you didn’t even _put up a sign_.” 

“Yes, that is exactly the issue right now: proper signage,” Rose said. She pressed the afghan closer to her face. This didn’t staunch the pain that wracked her brain whenever she spoke more than two words at a time, but it’d be worth it to watch Karkat faint again. “A pity that the state of Connecticut no longer exists, because they were, as far as I’m concerned, the asphalt kings of highway and road signage. I have never once been lost in Connecticut, mostly because I’ve never driven anything more mechanical than an ogre, but also because Connecticut is obsessed with the proper demarcation of city limits and highways—one of the benefits of having nothing in to do in your state aside from being the great connector between one northerly part of the eastern seaboard to another northerly, but a little less so, section of the self-same coast.” 

“What did she say?” Karkat demanded. “What the fuck did she even say?” 

“Karkat, please,” Kanaya said. She was sitting on the far end of the chaise with her back to Rose, head in her hands. “Please fetch someone with some measure of skill in medicine before your nettling aggravates her bleeding. …That’d be me, wouldn’t it.” 

“I always knew,” Karkat said, shoving another curtain at Rose, “all that horn stuff was a load of horseshit. Who the fuck does hornplay for real, especially with their weak, fleshy, monkey-sack intergalactic fuckbuddy?” 

He looked as though he wanted to say more. Rose removed the afghan from her eye socket, and let the blood dribble into and out of the socket. 

“Fuck,” Karkat mumbled, and fainted. 

Neither of them bothered to stop his fall, but they did both stare at his collapsed body. Kanaya’s hands tugged at her hair, so hard that it looked as though she might remove the fistfuls of black if she were allowed to go on. She had actually pulled out hairs from sheer frustration once, when Rose learned that Gamzee had made it to the alpha session and wasn’t even on the asteroid anymore. The black hairs had stuck to her palms and around her fingers, like wire rings. Rose set a hand on Kanaya’s shoulder, in case it should happen again. 

After a moment, Kanaya raised her head and said to the table, “I’m all right. Will your eye regenerate?” 

“Probably not,” Rose said. “Maybe if I were to bleed to death.” 

“Then would it be helpful if I—”

“No.”


	2. Cluckbeast

2.

She had healed up by the end of the week, and she was quite fine. A bit irritated, mostly by the cotton she kept packed into the socket, but fine. 

It was right around the beginning of the next week that Kanaya took the mason jars. Rose woke up knowing Kanaya had left, though the only sign of it was the absence of the usual mason jars full of grubs. The mason jars were half-full with a special sweet sauce, just high enough so that the grubs couldn’t keep their heads above the surface by standing, and just thin enough so they couldn’t float. The troll equivalent of balut, she had said once. “Balut is street vendor food,” Rose had pointed out, and Kanaya had replied, aiming for oblivious but instead just sounding like she had a cold, “You mean that isn’t common practice, wandering out into the streets and eating the first grub you see?” 

Her Seer powers had not prepared her for the queasy sense of loneliness she felt at the jars’ absences; nor had it prepared her for the vision of Kanaya glowing in a lightless hallway, fangs coated in red. That vision presented itself to her, then fell away to a different, more present one: Kanaya had snuck away somewhere to a room deep within the asteroid, where the only way to get there was by foot. 

 

*

 

Kanaya had curled up in a pile of robot Aradia heads in a room full of towels and metal. There were three empty mason jars, stacked neatly in a corner. Judging from the number of robot heads tossed aside with blue blood leaking out of punctured tubes, Rose deduced that she had discovered the rainbow drinker equivalent of lying on a couch and eating ice cream. She also deduced by the straight, green lines cracking across Kanaya’s bared shoulders and neck that Terezi had tried drubbing some sense into her just an hour earlier. 

“What are you doing here?” Rose said. 

Kanaya rolled over, a robot head still attached to her teeth. When she saw Rose, she yanked her teeth out of the tubing and made a clumsy attempt at standing. But her foot slipped on a still-wet circle of blood, and she slammed back into the pile in an undignified tangle of limbs. If she found it painful, she made no mention of it. “You are about to make a joke about light or vision,” she said. 

“It feels topical,” Rose said. 

“No,” Kanaya grunted in between ineffectual flails, “thank you.” 

She was still an elegant creature, even as she sagged into the pile, although she was gangly in way that made sleeveless clothes unattractive. But now Rose wanted to touch those shoulders, check if the cold metal had chilled her skin, too. 

“I noticed,” Rose said, “that you moved out.”

“No, I merely exited the room to eat. The delectable screams of the grubs tend to disturb you.”

“Normally when you’re hungry, you flatter the curve of my neck and tell me that afterwards you’ll spoon-feed me your own eggs. Did you find that line in that novel?” 

“It was in a very well regarded comic, banned for inciting an epidemic of masturbation.” 

“I have no doubt.” 

Kanaya gave up on standing, and settled for sitting, knees tucked to her chest and fangs hanging over her lower lip. Rose perched herself on a heap of heads. She pushed a small little pool of blood about with her toe, outlined the stiff curve of Aradia’s plated hair in blue. Finally, Rose said, “What’s wrong?” Maybe this related to Kanaya’s dead lusus in some fashion or another. Everything did, in the end. She was on an asteroid full of orphans. It always came down, really, to the parents. 

“I don’t understand why you won’t let me kill you.” 

“And have you extinguish the flame of life in my one remaining eye?” Rose said. “You’ll go mad with guilt, I think. Perhaps you’ll put my dear brother in dresses to make up for my untimely absence. In your private moments, you’ll kiss his neck and call my name.” 

“It is the most reasonable solution to this dilemma, frankly,” said Kanaya, speaking not against Rose, but through her, but growing steadier as she spoke. “I can do penance. You will have the massive, empty vortex of your ocular socket filled. It’ll be twenty minutes of discomfort and little else.”

Kanaya had gotten a leg of her comb beetle stuck in her hair; Rose reached for the leg, then thought better of it. Kanaya was watching her, eyes narrowed with wariness and suspicion. It scared her: the tense silence that had suddenly emerged between them, as though they were two animals separated by a growth of tall, wild grass and had, by chance, heard the other moving behind the screen and were now estimating distance, and depth, and death. She let the feeling settle over her, then shrugged it off. This was, she told herself, no different than the difficulties of any other cross-cultural couple. It most certainly was not a metaphorical savannah. “I understand how death can seem like a trivial matter when you’re a creature of the shining morning who feasts on life, but I find this in bad humor.” 

“I’m not saying this in jest.” 

“And now we have entered the realm of farce. No—how could we be entering it when it is well and apparent that we’ve always been here?” 

“If I could transform my visage into stone to match your absurd human idiom in order to better convince you of my seriousness, then I would,” Kanaya said, and turned her head, subtly, towards the door. Rose had a very excellent view of the back of Kanaya’s ear, the measured, calculated arch of smooth skin and the abrupt growth of black, coarse hair, tamed with the force of combs and grub oil. “It will be swift and relatively painless. In retrospect I can’t understand why we never developed immortality on Alternia. It’s a trait that would have suited our race’s bloodthirstiness well.” 

Kanaya’s knees were nearly level with her chin and her arms had settled, tight, into the space between her body and her legs. Rose looked down, and realized that she, too, had been slowly withdrawing into herself throughout the course of the conversation. It was time, she thought, to stop talking. She was not so fond of the dark that she’d willingly offer herself up to it again. Twice was enough. And Kanaya—she felt a hot spark of anger. Kanaya, who had ended the life of her friend for vengeance, now wished to murder her for guilt. Kanaya in the lab room by a blast of light, Kanaya on the roof with the chainsaw; Kanaya in the pile with her pity.

Rose reached down, and tangled her fingers in Kanaya’s hair. She bent down for a kiss; and in doing so, drove Kanaya’s bent horn into the cotton stuffed in her empty socket. 

 

*

 

GA: I Should Have Clarified  
GA: When I Asked To Kill You I Meant It Romantically   
TT: I wasn’t aware that there was a romantic way to kill someone.   
GA: Honestly Ive Only Ever Done So In A Platonic Manner Driven By A Colorless Rage Fueled By Indignation Independent Of Any Directional Values   
GA: But Ive Read About People Putting Down Their Pitymates Out Of Deepest Loves And Such  
TT: And such!  
GA: What  
GA: What Did I Say That Warrants Your Shout Pole  
TT: I’m perfectly capable of carrying out a monocular existence. It’s hardly as though my talents or my role require depth perception. If one of your horns were to snap off, would you care to have me press my wands against your throat and blow off your head?   
GA: No Because Then Id Be Dead But Youd Come Back In A Shower Of Rainbows  
TT: I don’t think that’s the point here.   
GA: Isnt It   
GA: Oh  
GA: No Its Not Is It   
TT: Congratulations. I should bake you a cake.   
GA: Ugh Im Sorry   
GA: But Youre Already So Vulnerable That The Loss Of Your Eye Makes Me Nervous  
GA: How Do You Humans Survive Without Use Of Both Your Vision Globes Youre Already So Soft And Squishy And Delicious As Is And Asymmetry Does Not Become You  
TT: I’m glad that we’re still in the game where we could be ambushed at any moment by radioactive imps.  
GA: See This Is What I Mean   
GA: Your Deliberate Obtuseness To The Reality Of Your Loss And Your Verbal Burns Which Right Now Are More Like Verbal Blisters Are Charming But Sad   
GA: Its Very Nerve Wracking I Can Feel My Undead Unrotting Brain Tubes Rattling My Think Pan   
GA: I Want To Make Piles For You And Fill Your Empty Socket With Glass Beads And   
GA: What I Mean Is   
GA: I Want To Hold In Sopor While Rubbing Your Shoulders And Kissing Your Neck   
GA: And As You Revive In A Spritely Manner Id Hold You And Spend The Rest Of The Day With You Checking If Your Recently Resurrected Appendages Function Properly With Kisses And Massages And Other Exploratory Measures Some Which Involve Your   
GA: Wow Uh   
GA: Ill Stop There  
TT: … I’m impressed.   
TT: You never delve into such details unless I’m asking you what you’re wearing.   
TT: So many of cybering sessions, ruined by your intense rhapsodizing over the precise shades of azure and tangerines and angle and dip of this ruffle and that hemline.   
TT: Had I known all it’d take for you to make the jump from ‘cocktease’ to ‘XXX’ would be a dash of casual homicide, then I would have started every session with ‘Darling Kanaya, let me find your favorite knife so you can blithely embed it into my abdomen, for, my fair Florence Nightingale, such are the tokens of my love for you: bloodstains and being receptive to your well-timed thrusts.’   
GA: Is This Sarcasm   
GA: Youre Being Sarcastic Arent You I Can Hear It Falling From The Sky Like Grub Bombs Launched From A Catapult Against The City Walls In A Siege  
TT: You speak as though you’ve been in cities at siege when we both know well enough that you were raised in a desert oasis, isolated from trollish contact and common sense.   
TT: As romantic as this is for you, you’ll have to pardon me for being less than interested in becoming fodder for your masturbatory fantasies.   
GA: Urgh Thats Not What I Mean Although I Can See How You Might Interpret It That Way With Your Inability To Take Good Advice Or Even Recognize It   
GA: If You Were A Troll This Wouldnt Even Be A Question Id Just Do It For Your Own Good   
GA: But Since You Are Human And Also My Matesprit I Dont Want To Actually Do Harm To You   
TT: Except for the killing part, but we can’t have everything, I suppose.   
TT: Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just found a reason to make myself busy.

 

*

 

They had a fight, or rather, they fought and then continued fighting. On the fourth day, they couldn’t agree on even the color of Kanaya’s dress, and then disagreed on who should leave. The asteroid was enormous, so there were many rooms and buildings that were left unoccupied. For a while, they had tried living on the same floor, but the atmosphere had been tense and suffocating. Trolls, Kanaya had said early in their journey while cleaning the flakes of blood off her chainsaw, shouldn’t live too close to one another until they were called on for service in space. It simply wasn’t done. 

If Kanaya were to leave, she’d disappear. So Rose left instead. It seemed better than dealing with the sticky, bubbling silence between them, and sometimes, Kanaya looked at her hungrily. Dave helped her lug her pile of scalemates to Can Town. He had, at first, offered her his elbow. When she had only stared at it, he muttered, “Right, not blind,” dropped four scalemates, and went red at the ears. 

The most impressive part of Can Town were the elaborate chalk murals, slapdash and haphazard, but charming in their carelessness. The town itself was interesting, in its own way. There were skyscrapers that nearly reached her hip, a town hall decorated with tacky Christmas lights and a pixilated jpeg Santa. It couldn’t be Christmas; by Rose’s own count, it was July. Dave must have put up the decorations on Christmas and couldn’t bother to take them down. It was, she thought, too bad he hadn’t decided to put on an obnoxious display of explosive, colorful patriotism. Terezi would have liked that for sure. 

She and Dave laid out the scalemates next to Dave’s ridiculous .jpeg bed. He plopped on the bed, knocking some artifacts into her pile; she tacked it back onto his bed, and settled herself into her pile. 

“Rough,” Dave said. “Girlfriend sticks her dong through your face and still kicks you out at the end of the day.” 

“Her horn was considerably more pointed than a penis,” Rose said. “Although I can understand how you’d make that mistake, considering that your brother had yours replaced with foam and polyester not long after you crash-landed on Earth.” 

“Well, excuse me for trying to talk about your feelings. Thought I’d return the favor after a lifetime of, ‘Your dreams are like _Alice in Wonderdick_ , Strider, all I can see in my looking glass is hard gay and jizz leaking out of your asscrack’ and ‘Your unusual not talking-ness indicates that you’re attempting to reverse psych me into asking me how you are, because you’re too cool to ever ask for anything because of how much you love the dick.’” Dave flicked his shades down his nose, then pushed them back up. “You wanna borrow these?” 

“I like this look,” Rose said. “Very couture. Were Earth not a smoking pile of rock, my mother could likely get me—no, she’d demand and blackmail—a photo shoot for Vogue.” 

Dave bit his lip, his teeth turning his lip pale. Poor Dave, she thought, distantly. She considered, maybe, plucking the cotton out of her eye, but she suspected Dave would find this more disturbing than comforting. 

“You know what Terezi did,” Dave said. “First day I stayed here, she woke me up by smacking me over the head with her cane and stuck her elbow on my throat. ‘What up, cool kid,’ she said. ‘Your brother lusus lupus Twilight werewolf guy didn’t train you as much as I thought, it seems!’ I’ve spent every night here dodging her nightly jumping while she goes, I am Leatherwingflapbeastman, instrument of justice and all that shit. Those trolls are whack.” 

Well. Compared to that, goring seemed comparatively mild. She rubbed the ridge of her eyebrow. She let her finger slip, a little deeper, and shut her good eye. 

“I miss her,” she said, and to her horror, heard the words exit her mouth with all the strength of an eggshell. 

“You just hauled your ass out of there an hour ago,” Dave said. “You gotta be shitting me.” 

“There is no shitting being done here. My shit is wrapped up in a diaper of complete sincerity.” 

“No, you’re Rose,” he said. “I’ve seen your secret diaries, okay. ‘Dear diary, is anyone out there? It’s me, Rose. My last blood ritual didn’t go as planned. Are you punishing me for not believing in you hard enough? Should I just have Zazzerpan stick it in Frigglish so you wrinkly, tentacled Cthulhus can get your rocks off? Cool beans.’” 

“Personally,” Terezi said, thoughtfully, “I think this whole fight is idiotic.” Rose and Dave both jumped. Terezi had been on the other side of Can Town, the wrong side of the tracks, as it were, when they were moving the scalemates, but now she was sitting at the head of Dave’s bed, his gif pillow pressed into her chin. “Your aspect is Light and your role’s a Seer. It’s only natural that irony and coolness should conspire to take your eyeballs.” 

“I’m cool,” said Dave. “Where’s my complimentary eunucleation?” 

Terezi shoved the pillow in his face. “The point is, Cantelope, is that it was just plain inevitable. The second you were aspected and titled, the game began shooting arrows at those lavender-ringed targets on your face.” She stepped out of the darkness, chalk smeared around her mouth and nose, and sat on the scalemate pile alongside Rose. “Hornplay? Kinky.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Rose said, not displeased by Terezi’s arrival. She herself had predicted that her title would likely entail some kind of eye injury; but it would have been nice if she could have gotten the eye squashed by some means other than her girlfriend. “I’m sure Karkat thinks the same of humans.” 

“You might as well have sat on her horns! It would have been more gratifying, and would have resulted in fewer visible injuries.” 

“I’m sure with sufficient time, our escalation of wild sexual escapades would have led us down that path.” 

“Jesus fucking Christ, stop,” Dave said. “Di Strid’s locking up your chastity belts and moving the twisted sisters’ convo off the torture porn and guro.” 

“Shoosh, coolkid,” Terezi said. “We’re _hatefriends._ Graphic recollection of our horrible mutilations is what we do! Isn’t that right, Rose?” 

Last week they had been talking about ice cream flavors. “Certainly.” 

“I wish I could have seen it,” Terezi said. 

“I’ve always wanted to try exhibitionism.” 

“You’re both _blind_ ,” Dave said. Rose passed Terezi a scalemate, and nodded to Dave. “Half. Fuck. Mmmngffghh,” he said, as Terezi stuffed his mouth full of plush dragon tail. 

Terezi seemed content with that, leaving Dave quiet as she mulled over something. Rose wondered what. It’d be fascinating, she thought, to get a look into Terezi’s mind someday, to see the workings of her intuition. She had thought Terezi might have some advice to offer, but then realized she was being selfish. She was looking for someone else to point her to the right direction, and Terezi had other better things to do. 

Still, she couldn’t help herself from fishing. “Kanaya tells me I should let her kill me,” she said. 

“Kanaya,” Terezi said ponderously, “like Karkat, that mud-brained idiot, thinks feeding toxins to her blackcrush is a gesture of exquisite romance. You’ve entered into the red with an idiot who learned everything she knows about concupiscent romance from shitty propaganda novels. If you want to convince her, you have to convince her that decapitation’s not sexy, not even in the novels. And that’s all I’m saying on the matter! I’m bored of talking about your quadrants already. In hindsight, I should have just let you flounder around some more. If only hindsight didn’t mean staring fixedly at your own ass.”

“Which, of course, you can’t see,” Rose said. 

“And that’s exactly why you need to move out! Two days from now, we’re going to hate each other so much that I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself from tearing off my pants and quizzing on troll anatomy.” 

“It can’t hurt to compare undead genitalia to more extant versions of the same,” Rose said. “Take me now, Terezi. I simply can’t stand it any longer.” 

“The mighty dragon is happy to oblige,” Terezi said, and leaned over and licked Rose’s nose. “Whoops. The mighty dragon thought that was your mouth.” 

 

*

 

TT: I’ve considered your proposal.   
GA: Did You   
GA: Or Are You Just Saying That So You Can Wittily Subvert It By Saying A Misleading Statement That Will Lead Me To Believe That We Have Reached A Consensus Or At Least An Armistice But Instead Have Loaded Yourself With Numerous Sticks Of Verbal Dynamite  
GA: Kanaya With Great Forethought I Have Wrung My Think Pan   
GA: My Think Pan Is Wrinkled And Sore From All The Wringing Ive Done   
TT: I know you’re not technically rambling yet, but I’m going to step in anyway.  
TT: I’ve decided to take up your offer.   
TT: However, I demand a measure of reciprocity. You can kill me, but in exchange, I’ll have free rein to do whatever I’d like to you.   
TT: I restrict your wardrobe to a certain set of items, you sever my head from my shoulders, and we’ll all be happier.   
GA: Rose No   
GA: That Would Be To Quote A Former Friend Fuckin Unconscionable  
GA: Wwhat Kind Of Friend Wwould You Be Then   
TT: Well, I’m going to be the dead one, so I think I have some say on what’s unconscionable and what’s not.  
TT: Who said that? Karkat?  
GA: Eridan   
GA: I Killed Him Although Its Hard To Remember Sometimes  
GA: His Dream Selves Keep Finding My Chainsaw And Circling It While Saying Wwhy Kan Wwhy   
GA: So Its Like He Was Never Gone To Begin With  
TT: So I won’t be your first.   
TT: If it makes you feel better, you won’t be mine, either.   
GA: Technically I Practiced On Zombies Before Eridan  
TT: Excellent. We’re both women of experience, then.   
TT: If only my first time could have been your gentle chainsaw sliding sinuously into my gaping gash instead of being stabbed through with Jack’s sword, springing hard and erect from his torso.   
GA: Springing Hard And  
GA: What  
TT: I’m joking.   
GA: No I Understand That Part But   
GA: Uh  
TT: So what do you say?   
GA: Are You Quite Certain It Really Seems Ill Advised To Me In Fact I Cant See How This Can Possibly Be A Good Idea   
TT: But what about my potential transformation into Polyphemus?   
TT: Woe, for a brave, intrepid explorer has wandered into my cave, and he is a mighty prick, small but sure of himself.   
TT: Ah! The explorer’s light has put out my eye. Out, out, brief candle!  
GA: Poor Rose   
GA: Sometimes I Think She Doesnt Realize That Making Culture Specific References That No One Understands Isnt Funny Unless Theres Someone Else Who Gets It   
GA: Privately She Laughs To Herself In Her Silly Eldritch Tongues   
GA: Gyra Gyra Gyra  
GA: But Then She Sit Back And Thinks Drat If Only Someone Was There To Bask In The Dim Glow Of My Victories In Impenetrable Allusion Slinging How Sad And Pitiable I Can Feel My Blood Pusher Rupturing At The Artery And The Warm Flush Of Pity Turning My Entire Face Green As Well As The Rest Of My Body Due To The Blood Leaking Everywhere Oh No   
TT: The eldritch tongues are nothing to laugh at, Kanaya.   
GA: Yes It Is Your Conlang Of Choice When Youve Gone Glumdank   
TT: Grimdark.   
GA: Glamdram  
GA: Gunkdork  
TT: …   
GA: Youre Laughing Arent You   
TT: I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.   
TT: And since we’re no longer cohabiting, there is no way for you to check my statement against the bald, stark face of truth.   
TT: I want an answer, Kanaya.   
GA: Honestly   
GA: I Think You Are Leading Me Into Some Kind Of Rhetorical Trap Covered With Branches And Brambles Of Sarcasm And Pointlessly Mundane Minutiae  
GA: But Alright Since You Insist  
GA: Where Should We Meet 

 

*

 

They met in a room full of bunkbeds near an empty shuttle hangar. In a hospital or an army base, it might have been a place where people working late night shifts could go and rest. At the end of the hall was an empty hangar. There was a door that led to a control room of sorts, halfway between the on call room and the hangar. Rose had gone there a few times to play with the switches, but the power had been cut there long ago. 

Kanaya was sitting on a lower bunk, near the opposite wall, in her work clothes. It had been a few days since they had seen each other in person; Rose, for a moment, felt enormously tender towards Kanaya. But this was a game they were playing. She was certain—she’d bet her life on it—that Kanaya would realize how selfish her request for decapitating Rose would be before she actually hacking he head off. She had primed Kanaya already to retreat; now all she had to do was go for the kill. Metaphorically speaking. 

“On Alternia,” Kanaya said, “this room would be illegal.”

“Prostitution laws?” Rose said.

“Yes.” Kanaya was fiddling with the lipstick in her lap. She looked up at Rose. Her glow flickered; a sure sign of nervousness. “Are you sure—”

“I’m always ready for a spot of beheading. And you?” 

“It’s difficult to place myself on the spectrum of mental preparedness when you are forcing me to do off with your head.”

“Ah, but unless you’ve forgotten, this was your proposal to begin with,” Rose said. “I was swayed by your unwavering conviction and inability to understand my protests of, ‘No, Kanaya, I think my head looks best when it’s attached to my neck and not rolling on the floor somewhere.’ It’s time for a French revolution.” 

The lipstick flashed: green, then black. “It’d be a waste to carry this out here,” she said. “It’ll be impossible to clean.” 

“Maybe the blood splatters will be interpreted as a decorative element.”

“Are you proposing that we just leave the bloodstains all over the sheets where it might be misinterpreted as a black proposal?” Kanaya said, but her hand floated up to her neck and massaged the dead, empty veins along the side. “We should remove ourselves to the hangar.” 

“Are you sure?” Rose said. “I could lie down on the bed.” She sat on the edge, raising her knee up so the slit on the skirt hiked up, revealing more of her thigh. She didn’t miss the way Kanaya tilted her head for a better look, nor did she miss the subtle waver of doubt in those eyes. She could feel it sometimes, how much Kanaya liked her. Adored, even, wholeheartedly and kindly. She forgot, sometimes, that trollish flush love wasn’t like human love, that Kanaya took a particular delight to things like Rose banging her shin on low tables and watching Rose make faces when she drank the truly awful coffee. 

“You could,” Kanaya said, her voice deepening as she stepped towards Rose with her fangs glowing against her black lips. She put a hand on Rose’s shoulder, and made a show of thinking. Then, with a sigh, she said, “I suppose that is one way we could do this,” and drew herself up. She put on, for some reason, her cracked sunglasses. 

Rose expected Kanaya to bend down and kiss her, but instead felt something cold materialize against her neck. She set her fingers against the chainsaw’s teeth.

“Please remove your hand,” Kanaya said. “You’ll only make this unnecessarily difficult for us both.” 

Rose set her hand back in her lap. Her fingers folded into her palm, the touch light. She didn’t know why she noticed it. Maybe because she could feel herself sliding out of control; the cold plunge from theory to truth. “You’re really going to do this,” she said. In Kanaya’s eyes, she saw the beginnings of doubt emerging before she felt the sudden, oceanic might of her swing.


	3. Revival

Noise returned first, voices arguing about something from a distance. Then she was aware of a flat surface beneath her, and someone’s hands on either side of her head. The rest of her body, too, seemed present. 

“Order, order,” said Terezi, tapping the ground with her cane. “There will be _order._ Is the witness ready? Is there a witness to be readied? Kanaya, what are you doing with her face?” 

“I’m not sure if I’ve put her head on the right way or not.”

“Objection! How can you pail her if you can’t even figure out how to attach her head?”

“Mechanically speaking,” Kanaya said, “heads are not strictly a requirement for pailing. Also, you are both the judicityrrant and the legislacerator so I think it would be appropriate if I call a mistrial.” 

“Peppermint,” Terezi said. “You’re the one who came running to me with your matesprit’s severed head. You turned yourself over willingly to the law. Does the criminal get a say in her punishment? Does she, Dave?” 

“Can’t talk right now. Too busy fouling up your kinky sex toys with sprays of vomit. Jesus fucking Christ.” 

Well, at least Dave was here, Rose thought, and, with great struggle, opened her eyes. Both of them, in fact. They were in the shuttle hangar, and she was lying in a pool of red. Kanaya was squatting next to Rose, splattered unattractively in blood. 

“Oh,” Kanaya said. “Hello.” 

“Hi,” Rose said. Rose sat up, then stood. Kanaya stayed below her, looking faintly stunned by her proximity. She touched her neck, and when she did, she saw that her hand was bright and glowing, but faded, like the final glow of the sun on the horizon. Rainbow sparks jumped between her knuckles. So this was what it looked like, she thought, faintly fascinated. 

Dave was in a corner, heaving into a bucket; Terezi was dressed in flashy black robes; Karkat had fainted in the doorway. Kanaya, after a moment, stood, too. “Are you all right?” she said. 

“You actually did it,” Rose said, well aware that she still sounded as though she was watching a fire swallow up her house, but from very far away. She spoke from experience on that point, as she had been witness to this very event, only while up close. 

“I wasn’t supposed to, was I?” she said. 

Rose touched her neck. The blood was darkening her shoes to a baleful blue-black. “I don’t know,” she said. 

 

3\. 

 

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] RIGHT NOW opened memo on board NO STOP IT

CCG: WE’VE BEEN HERE FOR TWO YEARS AND IT’S BEEN A CONSTANT THUNDERSTORM OF BODY PARTS, BLOOD, AND EGGS FLYING AROUND ME.   
CCG: IF WE’RE GOING TO BE STUCK IN THREE YEARS OF ENDLESS DARKNESS ILLUMINATED ONLY BY OUR SHITTY GENERATOR AND OUR RESIDENT HOMICIDAL SEDUCTION RAINBOW DRINKER, THEN AT LEAST MAKE IT A BORING ONE.   
CCG: SOMETHING OTHER THAN “MIRACLES, BEST FRIEND, MIRACLES HONK HONK WHOOPS THERE I GO OUT THE WINDOW, GOOD LUCK FINDING ME, MY GLITTERING NUBBY DIAMOND LOVE!”   
CCG: OR, “HEY KARKAT, SUP SUP SUP, I’M SO COOL AND AM GOING TO STICK MY TEETH INTO TEREZI’S CHASTITEETH, YOU CAN GO AND PUT YOUR ELBOW IN HER FACE WHILE I’M GETTING HIP TO THAT JINGLE, NOW I’M GOING TO SLAP YOUR ASS, OH FUCKING BABY.”  
CCG: OR, “HEY KARKAT, HOW ARE YOU TODAY, I’VE BROUGHT YOU ROSE’S HEAD!!! WANT TO TRY ON A DRESS?”  
CCG: DIDN’T THE DRONES DRILL IT INTO YOU WHEN YOU WERE GRUBS? SAFE FUCKING SEX.   
CCG: NO HORN PLAY. NO WHIPS, KNIVES, BLOOD DRAINING,   
CCG: NOOSES, KINKY ROLEPLAYING, NOTHING GOING UP THE WASTE CHUTE OR PROTEIN MASHER, OR WHATEVER.   
CCG: JUST TWO TROLLS AFLUSH WITH PITY LOVE OR BLACKENED WITH HATE LOVE OR… YOU KNOW WHAT, LET’S MAKE IT SIMPLE SO YOU YAMMERING MORONS WITH BOILED PUPPY TURDS IN YOUR THINK PANS INSTEAD OF ACTUAL BRAINS CAN UNDERSTAND IT.  
CCG: TWO TROLLS, THEIR BULGES, NOOKS, AND A FUCKING PAIL.   
CCG: JUST THAT. NO INVITING YOUR AUSPISTICE TO MAKE SURE ALL THE KNOTS ARE TIED TO THE TABLE.   
CCG: IN FACT  
CCG: ARE ROPES BULGES? NOOKS? PAILS? A TROLL? NO? THEN NO FUCKING ROPES.   
CCG: I KNOW NO ONE READS THESE ANYMORE, WHICH IS JUST ONE MORE SIGN OF MY DIMINISHING LEADERSHIP   
CCG: WHICH I ABDICATED AND GAVE TO ROSE BECAUSE I THOUGHT SHE WAS A FUCKING PAIN IN THE ASS BUT AT LEAST SHE COULD FLY AND SAY SEER MUMBO JUMBO  
CCG: BUT SINCE I’M THE ONLY SANE PERSON ON THIS PIECE OF SHIT ROCK, I’M GOING TO MAKE SOME DEMANDS.   
CCG: ONE, NO MORE SEX. I MEAN IT THIS TIME.   
CCG: IN FACT, WHILE WE’RE AT IT, WHY DON’T WE KEEP A TWO FOOT DISTANCE FROM EACH OTHER AT ALL FUCKING TIMES.   
CCG: LET’S STAND FAR AWAY ENOUGH THAT THE TELESCOPING HUMAN BULGE CAN’T TOUCH ANYONE AND SPRAY THEIR SHITTY INTERNAL FERTILIZATION GENETICS ONTO ANYONE! NO ONE KISSES ANYONE, NO ONE STICKS THEIR HORNS INTO ANYONE’S CHEST CAVITY TO SEE IF YOU CAN FEEL MY HEART BEATING, DO YOU UNDERSTAND. NO ONE QUOTES TROLL ETERNAL FLAME AT ANYONE.   
CCG: AND NO MORE KILLING PEOPLE.  
CCG: PLEASE I’M SICK OF IT I DON’T EVEN LIKE ROSE THAT MUCH AND I’M TIRED OF SEEING HER CRAPPY HUMAN BLOOD ON EVERY SURFACE OF THE ASTEROID.   
FUTURE tentacleTherapist [FTT] 35:32 HOURS FROM NOW responded to the memo.  
FTT: I’m glad you care so much.  
CCG: SCREW YOU.   
CCG: YOU’RE ALREADY A SEER, YOU DON’T NEED MORE CREEPY VOYEURISM POWERS.  
FTT: Does it really count as ‘creepy voyeurism powers’ if you’re posting on a public memo? A memo where you’ve taken care to not only make reference to recent events, but also tag it with our handles?  
CCG: FUCK YOU.   
FTT: Maybe later.   
FTT: I’m a little busy at the moment.  
FTT: Have you ever seen Kanaya in cut-off shorts before?   
FTT: I’m going to send you the file.   
CCG: OH, HAHAHA. YES, GO RIGHT AHEAD!  
CCG: HEY KARKAT, I’M ROSE FROM THE FUTURE!   
CCG: I SAW THAT YOU HAD A MEMO ABOUT NOT FUCKING AND NOW I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU A PICTURE OF JUST HOW MUCH FUCKING I’M DOING. I’M GOING TO MOCK YOUR FESTERING, GANGRENOUS FEELINGS AND SICKEN YOU WITH PORNOGRAPHIC PICTURES OF MY MATESPRIT.   
FTT: I prefer to reserve those for myself, actually.   
FTT: And this picture is nothing but Kanaya in cut-offs, a shirt, and a cowboy hat.   
FTT: Now stop being a baby and take the picture. I need someone to help me complete the stable timeloop.  
FTT sent CCG the file timeless No Rose Stop It sick surmise Rsdfhhhhhhhhhhh.png  
CCG: YOU ARE THE WORST.   
CCG: I HOPE YOU TRIP AND IMPALE YOU ON YOUR OWN NEEDLEWANDS.  
CCG: I HOPE KANAYA TAKES OUT BOTH OF YOUR EYES AND ALL OF YOUR HUMAN KIDNEYS AND AIR BLADDERS.   
FTT: ♠   
CCG: OH HELL NO.   
CCG banned FTT from responding to memo. 

 

*

 

Karkat tracked her down on her way from the bathroom. 

“I hope you know,” Karkat said, “that I think you’re a wretched, sexually depraved freak of nature and what you’re doing is disgustingly romantic, so romantic that even I think it’s stupid beyond belief.”

“Ah,” Rose said, and restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Lessons from the wizened romance master himself. Come closer, young troll, so I can better hear you.”

She regretted saying this the second Karkat leaned into her ear and shouted, “ _You nook noodling fuckwit, even I know murder’s only romantic in the fucking books!_ ” 

“And fucking books they are indeed,” Rose said, pulling away from Karkat and pressing her ear to her shoulder. “I counted the pages for that book you gave me—”

“ _Gave_? You stole it, you farsighted—”

“And the ratio of pages devoted to sex and pages devoted to everything else is four-to-one. Four-fifths of that book is devoted to loving descriptions of bulges emerging from the bone like a wiggler crawling from the egg.” 

Rose stepped through the door of Can Town. When Karkat tried to step through, she leaned on the door frame, making sure to jam her knee against the frame, too, so Karkat couldn’t slip under her arm. 

“This never would have happened,” Karkat said, “if you and Kanaya had just been _sensible_ and stayed moirails. Do you know what you two were doing? Classic unconcilitated black escalation leading to death! Kismetic cluckbeast! And at the end of the road, is a gross, sappy attempt at reconciliation via bondage and emotional blackmail.” He dug into his pocket, and produced a picture of Kanaya in cut-off denim shorts, a cowboy hat, and a plaid shirt, the knot tied at her sternum. “I’m not the one doing the blackmailing,” he said before Rose could say anything, and stomped off, leaving Rose in the hall staring at the photo. 

 

*

 

As far as apologies went, Rose found this one to be tacky, but definitely intriguing. She remembered the proposition she had made, making Kanaya wear anything she wanted for however long she wanted, but she hadn’t expected Kanaya to take such initiative. They hadn’t yet decided if they should apologize yet, or if apologies were even necessary. She was a god, Kanaya was an undead dayterror. Death, for them, was like getting pneumonia. Or a slight concussion. Maybe a little stab to somewhere nonvital, like the shoulder or the ear. 

She located Kanaya in the hangar, scrubbing the blood off of the floor. Better scrubbing than licking, she supposed. She had bunched her skirt to her thighs, and balanced carefully on the balls of her feet and her fingertips as she cleaned. Wouldn’t it be easier to just wear shorts? Not to mention that because of the trollish aversion to buckets, Kanaya was forced to use a shallow pan of water instead. As for where she was getting the water—Kanaya looked up at Rose with an annoyed expression, as though to say, Well You Made This Mess Now Help Me Clean It.

Ah, Rose thought fondly. Trolls. 

“I received your apology,” Rose said, holding up the photo. “It’s been accepted, by the way.”

“Rose,” Kanaya said, her brow furrowing. “I have no idea what you are talking about. That’s a Photochopped image. I’ve never once worn anything like that.”

“I think it looks remarkably true to life. They even captured the way your glow bleeds through thin fabric, and the way you flare your nostrils when you’re angry but don’t want to say it.”

“I do no such thing.”

Rose shrugged, and pocketed the photograph. Well, she’d find a way to make it happen. 

“I’m moving back in,” Rose says. 

Kanaya looked up from the rag, her eyes bright and hopeful. “This is not one of your sarcasm games?” she said. 

“It most definitely is,” Rose said. “Which is why you need to stop your campaign of cleanliness, and help me with the heavy lifting.” Rose peered into her reflection, bent across a bubble and iridescent with oils and soap. She touched her neck, along the spot where she thought Kanaya had cut through her. The wound had healed perfectly. Most of the time, she just brushed against the place where Kanaya preferred to feed—but even that had vanished when she awoke. 

“It’s all over the halls,” Kanaya said, her voice rising into an unhappy whine. “And in the bunker. It is everywhere, and quite frankly, the splatters will rust through the walls and then it will breach the protective cocoon that is keeping our oxygen from spilling out and propelling us through our happy, lightless corridor like an air bladder with a leak.” 

“Yes,” Rose said. “That is exactly your dilemma at the moment.” 

Kanaya snorted. She was still nervous about meeting her eyes. And Rose was still, just a little, surprised that Kanaya had done it at all. She had been so sure that she had read Kanaya correctly. She should have started by wagering just a finger or a hand. 

Rose let her hand drop from her neck, and then extended it out to Kanaya. Kanaya touched her palm to Rose’s fingertips, and pushed herself up, careful to bunch her skirt high above her still-wet knees. She dropped the rag into the pan, pushed her hair away from her face with the side of her arm, and sighed, theatrically. “I should have crafted a pair of shorts,” she said; then met Rose’s eyes, and smiled. 

 

*

 

“I am never doing that again,” Kanaya said once they returned to their room. “Even if you beg me with your approximation of a small, juvenile canine’s eyes, I will ignore you and remind you of what happened the first and last time we tried it.”

“I’m a little hurt,” Rose said. “I assumed you were having as much fun as I was.” She settled onto the couch, folding her knees and calves beneath her. 

Kanaya shucked her skirt off, dried her long shins and knees with a towel. She hung up her skirt on the drying rack, and then removed her shirt. Then, stranding by the drying rack wearing nothing but a matching set of red underwear, she said, “May I see that picture again?” 

“I like this one a little better.” 

Kanaya gave Rose an annoyed look; then, squaring her shoulders, as though preparing to accept a great burden, she went and sat beside Rose, and held out her hand, palm up. Rose handed the picture to her. 

“I made this outfit once,” Kanaya said slowly. “When I was attempting to court you by crafting various articles of clothing—”

“And yet I’ve never seen any of these clothes, despite your repeated claims that these mysterious garments exist,” Rose mused. “As I remember it, you moved in with Karkat for two weeks, stress-ate him into a coma, and after waking him, made him send me your flushed confessions, but go on.”

“—I was in the process of making the clothes, I would’ve been too nervous to finish them,” she said, and swatted Rose on the arm. She took the photo with her as she went to the drawers to slip into her dress. The green one, this time. “The point is, I requested Dave’s advice for what outfits were considered appropriate for your silly human courtship rituals, and he told me that this was one of them.”

“And you put it on and let him take pictures of you?” 

“No, I realized when I was hemming the shirt that even your torso was not short enough for this.” 

“I’m glad you realized it then, and not the moment you decided to go to Dave Strider for advice.”

“He told me he is good at acquiring the amorous affections of human women,” Kanaya said, sulking. 

“If you were to lock Dave in a room with an ordinary human woman, he would pretend to be a blind deaf-mute.” 

“Your incestuous pity for your brother is endearing, much like whales breaking through the ice to eat young, newly hatched trolls in the poles.” Kanaya moved back onto the couch, and frowned at Rose’s shoes. Then she undid the laces and slipped them off of Rose’s feet. After a moment, she lifted her hand, and brought it to Rose’s cheek. 

“Aren’t you glad,” Rose said, “that I now have two eyes with which to witness you crawling into every sort of unsavory costume that Dave convinced you would send me into convulsing fits of arousal?”

“I’m glad that you are okay, and that there is no lasting damage,” she said evenly as she ran her finger along Rose’s lower eyelid. “And I wish you wouldn’t bring up memory of those. The mere mention of them makes the blood in my digestive sac slosh around.” 

“We did make a bargain,” Rose said. “I think it’s fair. It’ll only be momentary discomfort on your part. Just as it was on mine.”

“You're blackmailing me,” Kanaya said. Her arms were crossed, and elbows tucked into her rib cage. Her smile was strange. Almost like frost. More like the spidery growth of snow-soft ice growing on the window in November, blurring the sun and sky to a vague, distant gray. 

“Am I?” Rose said, and touched her hair. 

Kanaya unwound her arms from one another, and took Rose’s wrist in her hand. She leaned in, carefully, and kissed Rose’s mouth. The kiss was slow and cautious; gentle, without her fangs. Her tongue, cool and textured and dry, traced Rose’s lower lip, then pressed against the peaked tip of her upper lip. Rose let her mouth open, and reached up so her thumbs touched the base of Kanaya’s horns, then brought her hands down to Kanaya’s shoulder. She felt the brush of the dress over her knees. She cracked her eye open, just a bit, and stared up at Kanaya, hovering over her. She looked so nervous and vulnerable, like if Rose breathed too hard, she might spring away and run out the door, never to come back. What was the point in that? They could kill each other, over and over again, if they wanted to. The only difference was that Rose would come back, and Kanaya wouldn’t. So many people would kill to have what she had: the chance to be young and stupid and reckless with her body, but always come back pristine and untouched. The infinite possibilities of return. 

She felt Kanaya relax her legs and set them on either side of Rose’s hips. And she felt her own shoulders, slowly, untense. She moved her hands down to Kanaya’s cheeks, down her chest and the plated ribs, then settled them on Kanaya’s waist. 

“I shouldn’t have,” Kanaya said, guilty and embarrassed. 

“Ah, the rays of revelation,” Rose said, and Kanaya rolled her eyes, and nipped at Rose’s jaw, first close to the ear, then working to her mouth. The white light in the center of her vision grew until she had to close her eyes, lest the overwhelming brightness blind her. But even though she meant to shut it out, she couldn’t make herself do it; couldn’t help herself from wanting to see.


End file.
